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So this might mean more to some of you than it does to others, but it’s pizza-relevant nonetheless…

Back in the ’80s there was a pizza chain called Showbiz Pizza Place. If you’re not familiar with it, you might have heard of a similar place called Chuck E Cheese’s. The basic idea of both restaurants was that they served pizza, had a bunch of arcade games, and provided entertainment for kids via large anthropomorphic animals.

Showbiz, which is now defunct, featured a live music act (if you can call it that) called the Rock-afire Explosion, manned by animatronic animals.

Since the Showbiz chain has gone down, there has been a group of obsessive Rock-afire Explosion fanatics that collect and maintain the musical robots. As is the case with so many quirky hobbies nowadays, there is a documentary about the phenomenon coming out (scheduled to be released in Fall 2008, according to the documentary’s MySpace page).